Google Chrome is by far the most popular web browser in the world. But it's not perfect.

If you have a lot of tabs open, you may notice your computer's performance slow to a crawl. Many people have complained about it. A just-updated browser extension may help silence them, though.

The Great Suspender automatically recognizes tabs you've left open but unused for a set period of time and "unloads" them, replacing them with a simple screen that says "Tab suspended, click to reload."

By doing this, the extension is closing the tab in all but appearance. It prevents tabs from sucking up your computer's memory, but keeps them exactly where you've left them, so you don't need to worry about "missing" anything you meant to go back and read later.

You can change how long it takes for the extension to suspend a tab -- anywhere from 20 seconds to three days -- and you can also tweak the settings to fit your habits.

For example, you might keep a lot of tabs open to read on your way home from work, when you might not have Internet access. You can set The Great Suspender to close your tabs only when you have a connection. You can also "whitelist" websites to make sure it never closes them.

We tried it, and it really seems to work. We didn't even notice anything had happened to our inactive tabs until we clicked over, at which point we just reloaded to continue working as normal. Handy!

The Great Suspender isn't the only option on the market. Take OneTab: It similarly gets rid of your open tabs, consolidating them into a list of links. That's a bit more drastic than what The Great Suspender does.